Course Offerings by term

Examines the role of force, including coercive diplomacy, in contemporary international relations. Considers definitions of national security, alliance systems, force structures, force deployments, and coercive diplomacy. Examines the entire spectrum of force from terrorism and counter-terrorism, insurgency and counter-insurgency, low-intensity conflict, to conventional and nuclear weapon systems.

Topics vary by semester

The module topics change each semester and are taught by working professionals in the fields of international affairs, conflict resolution and civil society development. Each semester four or more different modules are offered. May be taken twice for credit.

Articulated within the emergence of the European nation-state and born in the context of the First World War and its aftermath, the discursive field of International Relations is organized around the constitutive concepts of conflict, anarchy, power, system, rule, law, and justice, and the practices of civil society and political economy. These concepts and practices organize, in turn, both the major schools of International Relations theory and contemporary methodological pluralism. This course interrogates these founding concepts from a philosophical perspective within the historical and discursive context of each major school: 1) from classical liberalism to international liberalism; 2) from classical realism to modern realism; 3) the ‘English School’ of IR theory (Bull); 4) Marxist tenets within international relations (from Karl Marx to international political economy); 5) Modern and Contemporary Critical Liberalism (Polanyi and Held); 6) The philosophical grounds of contemporary Constructivism.